The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on Tuesday launched a National e-agriculture web portal to enhance agricultural activities in the country
The Minister of State for Agriculture and Rural Development, Sen. Heineken Lokpobiri, unveiled the new web portal in Abuja.
He said the new portal would help those interested in agribusiness information about the country’s agricultural activities.
“The world has gone digital and most businesses are done in the Internet. And agriculture in Nigeria should not be an exception.’’
The minister said e-agriculture web portal came up as a result of the collaboration between the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).
“It’s a platform where everybody that wants to go into agribusiness can log into and find potentials that exist in agriculture.’’
He also inaugurated a 13-Member Steering Committee to implement work plan on how the portal will benefit agribusiness in Nigeria.
“The steering committee is expected to come up at the end of the day with an implementation work plan on how the portal will benefit agribusiness in Nigeria.
“I believe that with the technocrats will come up with all the necessary information needed for this new project to achieve its objectives.’’
Lokpobiri explained that the e-agriculture portal would focus on dissemination of information designed to help farmers in making best decision on farming.
He said the portal would promote the emergence of specialised agricultural knowledge from targeted research to address farmer’s priorities and improve the efficiency of extension system to electronic extension services via SMS.
The Director General, NITDA, Dr Isa Ibrahim, described e-agriculture as the process of deploying, adopting and accepting ICTs into the different aspects of the Agricultural Value Chain.
According to him, the national e-agriculture portal is a one-stop shop for agricultural content for all the stakeholders in the nation’s agricultural sector.
Ibrahim said the portal would provide an interactive interface for users to query datasets that are related to the agricultural sector in Nigeria.”
He said the portal will provide farming information like best pesticide and weather information to farmers.
“It will provide a platform for linking various stakeholders in the agro-allied industries and a ground for marketing, advertising agricultural products.
“It will also give a verifiable database of farmers and a platform for training of stakeholders and farmers on innovations”, he said.
Source: Daily Trust
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